F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is one of the most enduring 20th century novels. First published in 1925, the tragedy lays bare the glamour and perils of pursuing the ever elusive American Dream. In the decades since, the novel has been a staple in the American high school syllabus alongside Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

Jay-Z on the soundtrack of The Great Gatsby, the 3-D film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel of obsessive love and American social divisions? Surely, that's an all-too-obvious attempt to make a period story appeal to younger cinema-goers?

"I like large parties," says Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby. "They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy." This may be true, but it's doubtful whether the 66th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which runs from Wednesday to May 26, will provide much intimacy

Vladimir Putin's recent re-election as president of Russia was met with accusations of electoral fraud at home and abroad. While the former KGB spook (below) is often demonised by Western media, under his watch, average Russian salaries rose sixfold and poverty more than halved.

Bright Young Things is the fifth novel by Ana Godbarsen: counting the forthcoming Beautiful Days, she has now produced six 'young adult' books in under four years. So why feature Bright Young Things? For the simple reason that it's free (to download on Kindle from Amazon).

Twitterature
By Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin
Published by Penguin
ISBN 978 0141047713

Twittermania has been applied to the world's greatest literature. Students bewildered by Hamlet will finally understand what he's saying as the Prince of Denmark's self-doubt is translated into webspeak.